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Recovery in the News
Ex-user shares her story of addiction, recovery
Jill Whalen
Standard-Speaker
April 13, 2008
Laura Foose never thought she’d drop out of school.
She never believed she’d resort to stealing from her mother and aunt – or pawning any of her family’s cherished possessions.
And she never imagined it would all happen because she felt an overwhelming urge to plunge a needle full of heroin into her veins.
A few years ago, the Nuremberg native hated the person she had become. She was an addict, she said, and spent her days thinking only about how she was going to get her next fix.
And now, at 23, Foose is a mother. She’s studying for her general equivalency diploma. She’s happy. And she owes it all, she said, to methadone treatment.
“If it wasn’t for that, I’d be dead,” she said.
When Foose heard about opposition to plans to open a methadone clinic in Hazleton, she became upset.
“I just wanted to scream,” she said.
Discovery House, based in Providence, R.I., is eyeing space inside the Center City Medical Arts Complex, 20 N. Laurel St. Methadone is a drug used to wean individuals from heroin, OxyContin or other narcotics.
Foose, who now lives in the Harrisburg area, is finishing her methadone treatments at a Discovery House there.
She said she understands residents’ concerns. But because she’s been to several clinics over her more than three years in methadone treatment, she knows the operations are safe. She doesn’t want residents to worry, she said.
Those undergoing treatment arrive for appointments, may be tested for drugs, and are given their dose of methadone. If they don’t have a counseling appointment afterward, she said, they must immediately leave. No one is allowed to linger inside or outside the building, she explained.
“You are really watched,” she said, noting that security is high.
And those who are being treated at the methadone centers are there for a reason, Foose said. Waiting lists are often months to years long, and if a treatment appointment is missed, it is grounds for dismissal.
“When people get on methadone, it’s because they want to change their life or go back to the person that they once were,” she said.
Foose began methadone treatment at a center in Phillipsburg, N.J.
“I used to drive there every morning,” she said of the five-hour round trip. “I’d drive through snowstorms, ice storms. I never missed a day.”
Upon taking her first dose of methadone, she said, she started to feel well again.
“It doesn’t make you feel high,” she explained. “It blocks the feelings you get from narcotics. You know that you can’t get high.”
The methadone worked for her when stints at rehabilitation centers didn’t, she said.
Foose recalled her first experiences with drugs. Her father, she said, passed away when she was 14.
Distraught, she began hanging out with friends, smoking marijuana and staying out past her curfew. In time, she began taking the painkiller OxyContin.
“At the age of 17, I was addicted to OxyContin,” she said. “One day, I went to get it and the person I was going to get it from said they wouldn’t be able to get it for a couple of hours.”
The person recommended that she take heroin to stave off her cravings.
She was told it was easier to find and cheaper to purchase. She gave in. And after using it a couple of times, she was hooked.
“I used to call people potheads,” Foose said. “I thought (using drugs) was disgusting. I always said I would never stick a needle in my arm. After I started doing it I couldn’t stop.”
Her usage was behind her decision to drop out of school on the first day of her senior year.
“I stayed home and did drugs,” Foose remembered.
How much she used depended on how much money she had, she said. She said she stole from her stepfather, as well as from other family members.
“I never thought I would’ve done things like that,” she said. “But heroin really doesn’t discriminate.”
It took some time for her family to realize she was using drugs.
“I wasn’t able to go to my family’s houses without being watched,” she said. “No one trusted me. They’d follow me to the bathroom.”
After Thanksgiving dinner at her mother’s house one year, she wasn’t invited to stay. She had to spend the night at a hotel, she recalled.
It was around that time that Foose realized she needed – and wanted – help.
“I was tired,” she said. “My whole day was based on how to get money to get this. I was just so burned out.”
She said it was the methadone, along with the support of her family – and later, the birth of her daughter, Mylie – that helped her quit and stay the course.
Foose said she knows that others need help, too. They might not be able to get to a methadone treatment center because they don’t have transportation or can’t afford fuel. Currently, she said, the closest clinics to Hazleton are in Wilkes-Barre, Harrisburg and Phillipsburg, N.J.
When she initially looked into clinics, she found that waiting lists were extensive and help wasn’t immediately available at most of them.
“I’m proof that there is a need” for a clinic in the Hazleton area, she said. “It (addiction) can happen to anyone.”
Foose also believes that a local methadone clinic could cut down on waiting lines in area emergency rooms. Heroin users who are going into withdrawal, she said, might seek out an emergency room to get a painkiller prescription.
Foose said she’s nearing the end of her methadone treatment. She’s hoping to get her high school diploma and is visiting the House of Grace, a mentoring program that help attendees set lifelong goals.
She decided to speak out about her addiction, she said, because she wants the public to know that a methadone clinic can help so many.
“Without it, I would’ve been doomed,” she said.